Ho Lee Fook is redefining Cantonese meals in Hong Kong, with chef ArChan Chan calling the spot — coated in mahjong tiles and beckoning gold cats — “a Chinese language restaurant with a Hong Kong coronary heart.” Chan’s fashionable renditions of traditional dishes like char siu, candy and bitter pork, and steamed razor clams have turn into beloved by locals and vacationers.
For the most well-liked dish, char siu, Chan’s staff cures Kurobuta pork for 4 hours with sugar and spices earlier than marinating it in a single day in a hoisin-heavy sauce and potato starch. After roasting in a standard Chinese language smoker, the principally cooked char sui is completed on a charcoal grill with a coating of honey for a smoky, charred exterior.
Chan takes a artistic strategy to recognizable Cantonese dishes, including new components and flavors to nostalgic favorites. She was impressed to make her personal model of candy and bitter pork after struggling to discover a rendition that she personally loved and that hit a steadiness of bitter and candy; her replace consists of geometric cuts of pineapple changed into three-pronged constructing blocks and a preferred fragrance lemon tea that turns right into a base for the sauce.
The Ho Lee Fook model of stir fry king, an iconic Hong Kong dish that mixes nuts, seafood, and an allium, additionally makes use of artistic components like peanut sprouts and a mixture of three totally different seafoods: abalone, dried shrimp, and anchovies. In the meantime, razor clams are solely steamed for a little bit over a minute, earlier than being topped with glass noodles, contemporary inexperienced onion, scorching oil, and aged garlic soy sauce; Chan wished to be further considerate concerning the easy dish, which she loved rising up, with the contemporary clams reflecting the unbelievable stay seafood scene in Hong Kong.
Chan says her general aim at Ho Lee Fook is for purchasers to “really feel such as you’re consuming native meals with a little bit little bit of a twist and one thing that may be very memorable to you,” from the mahjong tiles lining the restaurant’s entrance to the fortune cookie that comes with every examine.
Watch the most recent episode of Consultants to see Chan’s course of for making considerate dishes that reimagine conventional Hong Kong delicacies.
